Former president George H.W. Bush moved to intensive care
By The Associated Press
HOUSTON -- Former President George H.W. Bush has been admitted to the intensive care unit at a Houston hospital "following a series of setbacks including a persistent fever," but he is alert and talking to medical staff, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Jim McGrath, Bush's spokesman in Houston, said in a brief email that Bush was admitted to the ICU at Methodist Hospital on Sunday. He said doctors are cautiously optimistic about his treatment and that the former president "remains in guarded condition."
No other details were released about his medical condition, but McGrath said Bush is surrounded by family.
Bush has been hospitalized since mid-November.
Earlier Wednesday, McGrath said a fever that kept Bush in the hospital over Christmas had gotten worse and that doctors had put him on a liquids-only diet.
"It's an elevated fever, so it's actually gone up in the last day or two," McGrath told The Associated Press earlier in the day. "It's a stubborn fever that won't go away."
But he said the bronchitis-like cough that initially brought the 88-year-old to the hospital has improved.
Bush was visited on Christmas by his wife, Barbara, his son, Neil, and Neil's wife, Maria, and a grandson, McGrath said. Bush's daughter, Dorothy, was expected to arrive Wednesday in Houston from Bethesda, Md. The 41st president has also been visited twice by his sons, George W. Bush, the 43rd president, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.
Bush and his wife live in Houston during the winter and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The former president was a naval aviator in World War II -- at one point the youngest in the Navy -- and was shot down over the Pacific. He left the White House in 1992. In retirement he went skydiving on at least three of his birthdays.






Most CommentedMost Popular
A 25-year-old man who died in Kern County sheriff’s custody Monday night had two plastic baggies with illegal drugs stuffed in his throat, the department reported.
The family of David Silva announced Friday it has filed its long-expected federal civil rights claims against the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, six sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant, two California Highway Patrol officers, the county and the state alleging excessive police force killed him.
He’s Dr. Merle Haggard now. The bad-boy hero of the rebel strain of music that put Bakersfield on America’s cultural map half a century ago did something Friday he hadn’t done since he was 9: He sat still in school.
SACRAMENTO -- The California High-Speed Rail Authority won approval Thursday from a federal railroad oversight board to start construction this summer on the first leg of what would be the nation's first bullet train.
A woman found dead in a southeast Bakersfield garage Tuesday was identified Friday as 18-year-old Mia Ramirez of Bakersfield.
A Bakersfield attorney’s rocky marriage, marked by a divorce suit and a history of loud, public arguments, reportedly erupted into violence early Wednesday morning when police say he turned a gun on his wife and fired.
A 25-year-old man who died in Kern County sheriff’s custody Monday night had two plastic baggies with illegal drugs stuffed in his throat, the department reported.
At long last, Bakersfield officials see light at the end of the freeway.